Discussions of the collapse of the lowland Maya are not new. However, it might be better to say that Maya civilization as a whole did not collapse, although many zones did experience profound change. Because societies are not bounded, unitary entities. collapses are rarely total, and continuity is a normal pan of collapse At the end of the Classic period [200 900 C.E.]. the institution of divine kingship and many of the well-known markers of elite culture such as carved stelae [slabs erected for funerals or commemorative purposes] and hieroglyphic polychromes [multicolored artistic pottery) ended, but Maya civilization continued in modified form with many important features intact (e.g.. literacy, war. art. the production of fine ceramics). In some cases large buildings were constructed in the Postclassic period [900-1512 C.E.], but the transition to the Early Postclassic [900-1200 CXj era is distinctive for a decrease in elite goods and contexts. The variability in artifact changes during the Terminal Classic [800-900 C.E.] and into the Postclassic. even within artifact classes (e.g.. fine versus unslipped ceramics), suggests weaker centralized control than during the Classic period. Site abandonments in the Terminal Classic indicate the collapse of the functional ability of Maya states, but sites that survived show that Maya civilization continued albeit without divine kingship and much of the spectacle around it.
The passage suggests which of the following about Maya living after the Terminal Classic in "sites that survived"?
Adapting to its changing environment and building its own ecological niche in interactions with other disciplines, the scientific discipline of ecology can be seen as highly_________.
Recent research has questioned the long-standing view of pearly mussels as exclusively suspension feeders (animals that strain suspended particles from water) that subsist on phytoplankton (mostly algae). Early studies of mussel feeding were based on analyses of gut contents, a method that has three weaknesses. First, material in mucus-bound gut contents is difficult to identify and quantify. Second, material found in the gut may pass undigested out of the mussel, not contributing to its nutrition. Finally, examination of gut contents offers limited insight into the mechanisms and behaviors by which mussels acquire food. Modem studies suggest that pearly mussels feed on more than just algae and may use other means than suspension feeding. Pedal feeding (sweeping up edible material with a muscular structure called the foot) has been observed in juvenile pearly mussels.
Besides the phytoplankton pearly mussels capture from the water column, their guts also contain small animals, protozoans, and detritus (nonliving particulate organic material). Recent studies show that mussels can capture and assimilate bacteria as well, a potentially important source of food in many fresh waters. Another potential source of food for mussels is dissolved organic matter. Early studies showing that pearly mussels could take up simple organic compounds were largely discounted because such labile (unstable) compounds are rarely abundant in nature. Nevertheless, recent work on other bivalves suggests that dissolved organic matter may be a significant source of nutrition.
Of this complex mix of materials that pearly mussels acquire, what is actually required and assimilated? Stable-isotope analyses of mussels taken from nature and of captive-reared mussels are beginning to offer some insight into this question. Nichols and Garling showed that pearly mussels in a small river were omnivorous, subsisting mainly on particles less than 2S micrometers in diameter, including algae, detritus, and bacteria. Bacterially derived carbon was apparently the primary source of soft-tissue carbon. However, bacteria alone cannot support mussel growth, because they lack the necessary long-chain fatty acids and sterols and are deficient in some amino acids. Bacteria may supplement other food resources, provide growth factors, or be the primary food In habitats such as headwater streams, where phytoplankton is scarce. Juvenile mussels have been most successfully reared m the laboratory on diets containing algae high in polyunsaturated fatty acids. Thus, it appears that the pearly mussel diet in nature may consist of algae, bacteria, detritus, and small animals and that at least some algae and bacteria may be required as a source of essential biochemicals.
The passage mentions which of the following as a factor that limits the information researchers can glean from analyzing gut contents?
Souk years ago someone in the police force had discovered a way of manipulating crime statislics; the
methods used, though simple, were not immediately transparent, and without actually being__________were
nevertheless utterly misleading.
Writing for the New York Times in 1971. Saul Braun claimed that - todays superhero is about as much like his predecessors as today's child is like his parents." In an unprecedented article on the state of American comics, "Shazam Here Comes Captain Relevant. Braun wove a story of an industry whose former glory producing jingoistic fantasies of superhuman power in the 1930s and 1940s had given way to a canny interest in revealing the power structures against which ordinary people and heroes alike struggled following World War II Quoting a description of a course on Comparative Comics" at Brown University, he wrote, 'New heroes are different—they ponder moral questions, have emotional differences, and are just as neurotic as real people. Captain America openly sympathizes with campus radicals.. Lois Lane apes John Howard Griffin and turns herself black to study racism, and everybody battles to save the environment."" Five years earlier. Esquire had presaged Braun s claims about comic books: generational appeal, dedicating a spread to the popularity of superhero comics among university students in their special 'College Issue." As one student explained. "My favorite is the Hulk. I identify with him, he's the outcast against the institution.'1 Only months after the NW York Times article saw print. Rolling Stone published a six-page expose on the inner workings of Marvel Comics, while Ms. Magazine emblazoned Wonder Woman on the cover of its premier issue—declaring s Wonder Woman for President'’ no less—and devoted an article to the origins of the latter-day feminist superhero.
Where little more than a decade before comics had signaled the moral and aesthetic degradation of American culture, by 1971 they had come of age as America's "native art::: taught on Ivy League campuses, studied by European scholars and filmmakers, and translated and sold around the world, they were now taken up as a new generation's critique of American society. The concatenation of these sentiments among such diverse publications revealed that the growing popularity and public interest in comics (and comic-book superheroes) spanned a wide demographic spectrum, appealing to middle-class urbamtes, college-age men. members of the counterculture, and feminists alike. At the heart of this newfound admiration for comics lay a glaring yet largely unremarked contradiction: the cultural regeneration of the comic-book medium was made possible by the revamping of a key American fantasy figure, the superhero, even as that figure was being lauded for its realism"" and social relevance."" As the title of Braun's article suggests, in the early 1970s, "relevance" became a popular buzzword denoting a shift in comic-book content from oblique narrative metaphors for social problems toward direct representations of racism and sexism, urban blight, and political corruption.
Which of the following best characterizes the relationship between the first and second paragraphs?
In the 1980s the press release announcing the discovery of a new fundamental particle turned a once_______
hypothesis of interest to no more than a few hundred physicists into an undisputed fact of global significance.
Researchers concluded thai although the success of pearl millet crops in the region varied with seasonal
climatic conditions, cultivation remains_________because of pearl millet's predisposition to perform under
stressful growing conditions, including drought.
Responsibility for the nation's decline rests squarely with a people who take for granted their claims to preeminence but do not_________interest in or commitment to actually maintaining it.
The snow-covered surface of the lake presents a reassuring illusion of________. but beneath the snow the ice is riven with treacherous cracks.
Suburbanization arguably ushered in numerous changes in (he way many people in the United States lived: the suburbs_________a society based on unprecedented consumption and intense privacy.
